Dr Paul Allen

Baptism with the Holy Spirit also called baptism in the Holy Spirit or infilling the Holy Spirit, is a significant concept in Christian theology, particularly in Pentecostal and Charismatic traditions. Here’s an overview of what it entails: Biblical Basis John the Baptist’s Prophecy : Matthew 3:11 (NIV) : "I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire." Mark 1:8, Luke 3:16, John 1:33 : These gospels make similar statements, emphasizing that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ Promise : Acts 1:4-5 (NIV) : "On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: 'Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.'" Acts 1:8 (NIV) : "But you will rec...

I’m a baptist but you don’t need to capitalize the b for me. First and foremost, I’m a Christian, identifying primarily with Christ, and only secondarily with my dear Baptist brothers and sisters. We baptists sometimes encounter a tension created by our baptistic convictions: How do we, as baptists, orient to those whose baptismal belief and practice differ from ours? In particular, how do we relate to paedobaptist individuals and churches? Paedobaptism (from the Greek root paedo for “child”) is the practice of baptizing the children of believers in infancy, in anticipation of their profession of faith in Christ. Rather than baptizing after someone professes faith, as credobaptists do (credo for “faith”), paedobaptists regard baptism as the New Testament counterpart to Old Testament circumcision. Therefore, they administer the visible, public sign of the covenant to the children of Christians. Now, we baptists believe that paedobaptists err in their baptismal theology and practice. We ...

Almost fifty years after Roe v. Wade, abortion remains the moral issue in American public discourse and politics. There are very few profiles in courage in American politics. This seems especially true when it comes to the defense of unborn life. The political predicament of a pro-life politician is this – the political class and the New York-Hollywood-Silicon Valley axis reward those who abandon pro-life positions and condemn those who refuse to surrender. A particularly important profile in moral collapse now resides in the White House. The story of President Joe Biden’s slippery shape-shifting on the abortion issue is both revealing and horrifying. Brace yourself. In response to the law in Texas that outlaws abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy, the fury of the Democratic Party and its national leadership has reached new levels of apoplexy. The fury has been predictable given the state of the Democratic Party and its commitment to abortion on demand. On Thursday and Friday of...

The gospel of Jesus Christ is always at risk of distortion. It became distorted in the centuries leading up to the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century. It became distorted at innumerable other points of church history, and it is often distorted today. This is why Martin Luther said the gospel must be defended in every generation. It is the centre point of attack by the forces of evil. They know that if they can get rid of the gospel, they can get rid of Christianity. There are two sides to the gospel, the good news of the New Testament: an objective side and a subjective side . The objective content of the gospel is the person and work of Jesus—who He is and what He accomplished in His life. The subjective side is the question of how the benefits of Christ’s work are appropriated to the believer. There the doctrine of justification comes to the fore. Many issues were involved in the Reformation. But the core matter, the material issue of the Reformation, was the g...

On October 31, 2016, Pope Francis announced that after five hundred years, Protestants and Catholics now “have the opportunity to mend a critical moment of our history by moving beyond the controversies and disagreements that have often prevented us from understanding one another.”  From that, it sounds as if the Reformation was an unfortunate and unnecessary squabble over trifles, a childish outburst that we can all put behind us now that we have grown up. But tell that to Martin Luther, who felt such liberation and joy at his rediscovery of justification by faith alone that he wrote, “I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.” Tell that to William Tyndale, who found it such “merry, glad and joyful tidings” that it made him “sing, dance, and leap for joy.” Tell it to Thomas Bilney, who found it gave him “a marvellous comfort and quietness, insomuch that my bruised bones leaped for joy.” Clearly, those first Reforme...

So you are reading your Bible, and you come across a passage a verse that you are having a hard time understanding. It seems like a straightforward reading of it would contradict what the Bible teaches elsewhere, or at the very least it seems like the passage teaches something unusual. What should you do? As one example, here is Jesus speaking to his disciples before his ascension: “If you forgive the sins of anyone, they are forgiven; if you withhold forgiveness from anyone, it is withheld.” (John 20:23). Is Jesus saying that individual believers can forgive sins of “anyone,” even if they are not Christians? Do we really have that power? Do we have the power to withhold forgiveness, even of Christians? This is a complicated passage. Here I want to give three steps to help understanding “tricky” passages like this. Examine the Context When you encounter a difficult passage, read around it, and see what is happening in the context. Does the context give clues about what ...

It doesn’t matter how many times you share the Gospel, you still need encouragement from time to time. After over an hour-long conversation with a young Roman Catholic named Jimmy, we ended the conversation with a hug. It was obvious, though, as he walked away from that spiritually we were speaking different languages. We talked about whether Jesus was the only way. He said yes, but kept saying that Jesus’ death made it possible for people who might never even hear about Him to be saved. In other words, if they lived good lives and followed their conscience that Christ could save them. He kept saying that it is only by the grace of Christ that he will be able to not die shortly after committing a mortal sin, but then, when asked why Jesus didn’t help those who have died while committing a mortal sin, he said that it was probably their parents’ fault for teaching them poorly and, therefore, God would show them leniency. It was very clear that though Jimmy had been catechize...

Five hundred years later some Christians seem almost embarrassed about the Reformation . Not me. The Reformation must continue, as it still has work to do. Its cry is essential ‘back to the Bible ’ and ‘away with man-made rules and traditions‘. As such it is a cry that must be heard in every denomination, and every church, in every generation. It is understood that it was the 31st October 1517 when the monk Martin Luther pinned his 95 theses to the door and unleashed a revolution that continues to this day. These theses could each have been a tweet, and they were deliberately intended to spark a debate. They undermined the idea that the Pope was the sole source of authoritative teaching, and encouraged the ordinary man to re-examine official Church teachings. That idea still holds power today and must continue to exert its effects. Just as the printing press enabled the ideas of the Reformation to spread, so the Internet allows the Reformation to continue today. May articles such...

Gemälde Katharina von Bora /Öl auf Eichenholz (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Martin Luther, author of the text of Christ lag in Todes Banden, and who, with Johann Walter, also wrote the melody (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) The fourteenth century was a bad time for the papacy. For a period, there were two rival popes and the papacy was under pressure from the French monarchy. It wasn’t a good time for the city of Rome either—seven successive popes abandoned Rome in favor of Avignon in France. Rome was sidelined and Saint Peter’s Basilica fell into disrepair. The popes returned to Rome in 1377 and then sorted out their divisions in 1417. A hundred years on, things were looking up: in 1505, Pope Julius II had decided to knock down the old St Peter’s and start again. He had big plans for his own tomb and wanted a basilica to match. It was time to make Rome magnificent once again. But that didn’t come cheap, so the church embarked on a fundraising campaign. It was this campaign that br...

Next Saturday will be the 498th anniversary of Martin Luther famously nailing his 95 Theses to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg, Germany, and kick-starting the Protestant Reformation as a result. Because of that, there will likely be many posts in the Christian blogosphere celebrating the recovery of the biblical Gospel from the perversions of Roman Catholic theology. And because of that, there will likely be many Romanist sympathizers who chide us Protestants as divisive, overly-narrow, unity-destroying, and judgmental. They’ll say something like this : This is what drives me nutty about Christianity. We all believe in the Bible, Jesus Christ, the road to salvation and the Resurrection. Do I believe exactly as you do? I’m sure I don’t, but I don’t believe you’re any less Christian than I am. We need to understand that there’s more that unites us than divides us. The problem, of course, is that Protestants and Catholics don’t all believe the same things about the most foundati...